Thursday, 24 November 2011

Introducing myself

I use the name Old McDonald on various forums around the world, and so it seemed appropriate to use it for my blog. My surname is McDonald and I am old.

When I was about 7 years old my father let me have a few square yards of land and I began to grow vegetables on it. I sold the produce. This was the whole idea of him allowing me to use it. He knew as well as I did that I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up and this was the starting point. He had wanted to be one too, but his father was a blacksmith not a farmer, and so he worked down the coalmines. At the end of WWII he bought a very small smallholding, a smallholding being known as a hobby farm in some parts of the world. So he was able to let me have a tiny piece of his land for my own use. He knew I would have a great uphill struggle to become a farmer (he had to continue working in the pits) but he encouraged me when the rest of the world said it was impossible.

From the very beginning I kept records of what I did with my little piece of land. From then to the present day is a long story - a 60 years long story. The details of where I have been in the meantime and my experiences of farming and gardening in various countries are contained in my records and that long story. I eventually made them into an ebook format at www.smashwords.com/books/view/84252 and if you click on the link and access the free sample you will be able to read much more about me and the places where I have farmed and gardened. The contents page lists the countries and the Preface will give you a good idea of how I think.

I will not be repeating things from the ebook in this blog, but instead writing about my present farming and gardening on my current property, which is a little over six and a half hectares or 16 acres in the middle of Portugal. I will post on a regular basis provided there is something of interest to write about, and I already have a couple of things from the past few weeks partially drafted. The next post should follow very soon after this one.